Susan Young, a teacher at Vista Heights Middle School in Moreno Valley, is running as a civics lesson for her social studies class.

Vista Heights Middle School teacher Susan Young, who is running for president as a lesson in civics for her eighth grade social studies class, works with students as they use laptops to create campaign websites.

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Vista Heights Middle School teacher Susan Young, 43, is running for president as a lesson in civics for her eighth grade social studies class.

Edie Atkinson-Bukewihge believes she’s the best choice for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee on Election Day.

Given that the election is one year from today – the Tuesday after the first Monday of November 2016 – the 66-year-old grandmother from Newport Beach has a defined window to reach her goal.

So to woo voters, her website includes her grandma’s chili recipe.

“You can ask people to vote for you. You can do all this and you can do all that,” she said. “But, bottom line is people like to eat.”

Never heard of Atkinson-Bukewihge? Or her chili? That’s understandable. She’s one of more than 1,300 people – and dogs, cats, porcupines, even dragons – who have filed a statement of candidacy for the office of U.S. president.

For some, declaring their White House dreams is a joke that costs them nothing, since the Federal Election Commission charges no fee for the paperwork.

For Atkinson-Bukewihge, it’s an earnest if not quixotic quest.

Still others, like Moreno Valley schoolteacher Susan Young, don’t really expect to win. But they can make a point or do a little teaching – like the living civics lesson that Young’s students will get from her campaign.

Being a super-long long shot with not much backing isn’t really so different from being a super-long long shot with some backing hoping to get into the debates (and public consciousness) for a specific reason.

This last group isn’t totally anonymous. Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig – who was getting some press before dropping out Monday – ran specifically to reduce the role of big money in political campaigns.

Lessig’s plan was to get elected, back a law changing how elections are funded, and then immediately resign.

But in a video explaining his departure Monday, Lessig expressed frustration at being unable to get himself – and his idea – onstage in next week’s Democratic debate.

“I may be known in tiny corners of the tubes of the Internet,” Lessig said. “But I am not well-known to the American public generally.”

LEADER BY EXAMPLE

Young, a social studies teacher at Vista Heights Middle School in Moreno Valley, knows she faces the longest of long odds.

But she isn’t in it to win it; she wants to give her eighth-grade students a hands-on lesson in electoral politics.

Young, 43, filed her paperwork back in June (when there were just 300 candidates) and is running as a Democrat because that’s how she votes. She got the idea after hearing MSNBC talk-show host Rachel Maddow mention the process in a short piece on third-party candidates.

“I had this vision of how I could use this in my classroom to teach my students about the political process. In four years, they will be the nation’s youngest eligible voters. The real goal for me is to get them to be informed voters.”

She’s using the tools young people are most familiar with: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Vine. The cost of her campaign so far: “I have spent zero dollars.”

Young’s students are also tasked with developing issues pages on her website, young4president.weebly.com; researching the possibility of placing her name on a state ballot as a write-in candidate; and creating a bumper sticker.

Young embraces being one of the unfamiliar names registered with the FEC. Her students laughed at what she calls “the crazies and the crackpots,” but it got them talking about the presidency. Her favorite: President Emperor Caesar.

“I think it’s fabulous because it’s democracy in action. For me it says anybody can be president. You can at least have the goal of running for president someday.”

PODIUM GATE

Most of the dark-horse candidates run in obscurity.

The campaign trail for Michael Petyo, a 66-year-old general contractor and Navy veteran from Hobart, Ind., is pretty much wherever he drives his truck. He’s driven to Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Missouri, paying gas and other expenses out of pocket.

Petyo ran for Congress in 1996 and 1998. He said his main concern is for the future of America’s children, and that he has lived the life of a common man who’s known hunger and job loss, unlike the Republican candidates on TV.

“I listen to what these guys and it’s like, ‘Hello, are you guys just reading my site, taking stuff off … and trying to relate to the working man and woman?’”

His news release tells how Petyo predicted that Scott Walker and Rick Perry would drop out by October. How he’s told thousands that Donald Trump is on an ego trip. And it also mentions asking Hillary Rodham Clinton to explain “Podium Gate.”

“This is where various podiums she spoke from disappeared after her speeches,” the release said.

Asked about it, Petyo said he hadn’t seen what the volunteer actually wrote in the release before it was mailed, but explained that Podium Gate was more a reference to Clinton campaign stops that didn’t go so well and she chooses to ignore.

Petyo’s campaign has received some coverage in small-town newspapers. He said he also was contacted by a reporter for a news service interested in chronicling his common-man campaign.

“They saw that it’s just possible I might be the next guy waiting in the wings, waiting to come forward and be president.”

PRESIDENT CRANKY PANTS?

Along with the serious come the more frivolous candidates.

The names on the FEC website include the likes of Trump and Clinton, as well as Bippy the Clown from Louisiana, Lezbe Honest from Virginia and Cranky Pants from Arizona.

Some of the names can’t be published in this family newspaper because of the body parts they reference. But others include Hip Hop for President, This is Fake, Banana for President and Cookie Cult of America.

The list grows daily, proving what teachers say in civics class to be true: Anybody can run for president of the United States.

Yes, there are age and citizenship requirements to actually hold the nation’s highest office. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to get elected these days.

Still, when it comes to that first step of filing what’s called a Form 2 with the FEC, citizens of any means can have at it. The forms can be downloaded for free and submitted by mail, fax or online.

Not all the dark-horse candidates languish in obscurity. Look at what happened to Deez Nuts 2016 earlier this year.

Deez Nuts, who turned out to be a 15-year-old Iowa high school student, persuaded Public Policy Polling to put his name in contention in August with Trump and Clinton.

Nuts polled 7 percent in Minnesota, 8 percent in Iowa and 9 percent in North Carolina. The results made him a sensation on Twitter, but Nuts, aka Brady Olson of Wallingford, Iowa, will be too young for the office for another 20 years.

WHO ARE YOU?

Atkinson-Bukewihge, a widow who says she lives on Social Security, would love to have the kind of exposure Deez Nuts managed.

She attracted some local press when she ran for governor back in 2002 as a Republican.

“I really want to run this country and I know I can do it. I could have run California but nobody listened to me then.”

Here’s the one question she would most like to answer if she could be in the Democratic lineup for the Nov. 14 debate in Des Moines: Who are you?

“That, to me,” Atkinson-Bukewihge said, “wins the election.”

But when asked that question directly, she deflected with true political grit:

“I want to say that to a multitude of people who can hear me say it right out of my mouth – not somebody else writing it.”

To reach her multitude, Atkinson-Bukewihge created a 19-minute campaign video in response to an offer by Playboy.com to publish videos from any candidate.

Theresa Walker is a Southern California native who has been a staff writer at The Orange County Register since 1992. She specializes in human interest stories and social issues, such as homelessness. She also covers nonprofits and philanthropy in Orange County. She loves telling stories about ordinary people who do the extraordinary in their communities.